A recent essay by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg provides an interesting and yet puzzling view of today’s workplace. Titled “Wealthy, Successful, and Miserable,” it attempts to explain why highly educated, highly paid workers are unhappy.
The Duhigg essay was touched off by a reunion at the Harvard Business School, where he discovered that many of his classmates were dissatisfied with their jobs and unhappy with what they had done with their lives.
At first, we could, and probably should, dismiss their unhappiness as the whining of a bunch of overpaid Harvard MBAs going through a midlife crisis. But then Duhigg saves the essay with his observation that the unhappiness was concentrated in the most successful of his classmates.
These are the people at the top of their class, who were recruited by the most prestigious firms and paid whopping salaries for their skills and their credentials. What is missing, though, is meaningful work. As one of Duhigg’s classmates says, “I feel like I’m wasting my life.”
To some extent, the discontent of his classmates could be considered a simple case of seller’s remorse over the Faustian deals they had made. After all, they agreed to be overpaid and enjoyed the prestige of being a part of a top-rated company … and yet the elite, finest analytical minds in their generation didn’t figure out that there might be a cost to these benefits? That viewpoint leaves unanswered questions about the broader motivational problem in U.S. workplaces.
One of the things we know about motivation is that it is a shared responsibility. Both management — or leadership — and the individual play important parts in the process.
Duhigg cites a study done in 1991 that focused on understanding why some “… janitors at a large hospital were so much more enthusiastic than others.” The researchers found that how a worker viewed his or her work was the key. Some janitors were “helping patients.” Others were mopping up messes.
The other half of the motivation responsibility falls on management’s shoulders, and despite our recognizing the problem, overall performance in this area has been largely ineffective.
If you want some useful information and perspective on motivation, or if you simply want to know more about it, here are three people whose works and ideas can help.
The first is Abraham Maslow, whose “Hierarchy of Needs” is often summarized by a pyramid containing five successive needs of workers: Survival — physiological; Safety; Love/Belonging; Esteem; Self-actualization. The basic idea is that as these needs are fulfilled, individuals progress to the next level.
The second is William Shakespeare. His St. Crispin’s Day speech in “Henry V,” given before the Battle of Agincourt, is the mother of all motivational speeches. Henry gives his speech to his cold, exhausted, hungry, disease-diminished and rain-soaked army that was outnumbered at least 5-1 by fresh French troops. And it contains the three basic elements of any successful motivation effort: (1) We’re all in this together; (2) What we are doing is important and worthwhile; (3) We have the resources we need to succeed.
The third is Stephen J. Trafton, whose book, “At the Edge: A life in search of challenge,” reveals why some successful CEOs seek out activities that are dangerous, even life-threatening. This is is no textbook.
It does shed considerable light, though, not only on a CEO’s motivations but also on how the experiences affect the ability to motivate others.
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